projection so much harder. it is because we don't know which way those provisional ballots will go. they could reasonably lean towards donald trump because much of the in-person voting that happened on election day leaned in his direction, or could they potentially be those people who got mail-in ballots and then got nervous about what was going to happen with those mail-in ballots and decided to vote in person and they were going to vote for joe biden? we just have to wait and see for these votes to be counted. just another update that i just got on my phone, we have also heard we will not have another update from philadelphia county tonight. so those are all outstanding battle that we are still waiting on, george. >> that means we are likely to be going into tomorrow. thanks very much. let's go to georgia. steve osemsami is there. >> reporter: george, the issue now is the question of how many votes are left. we have about a 4,000 lead for joe biden here, and now the question is just what are the total number of votes that are out there.

now, we've talked a lot tonight, you heard a few people mention that there are approximately 26,000 potential votes that are out there. i want to give you an example of how messy this is because this election has gotten so close. all of those votes aren't in the bank. we're talking about military and overseas ballots as well as provisional ballots, but the big chunk of that are military and overseas ballots. i will use an example here, if you can follow along with me just to show you how mushy all of this is. gwinnett county, they were reporting -- that's the county north of here, north of fulton, they were reporting about 2,000 military and overseas ballots that were out that could be coming in that could be counted. i just spoke or connected with officials in gwinnett county that tell me of that 2,000 pool, only 1,000 of them came in and only three of them came in late before the deadline today. so part of what is difficult here is that the race is so

close and the numbers are squishy. because the race is close, it is going to be hard for anyone to make a call here. the secretary of state is hoping to have more sort of final numbers, as he is calling them, tomorrow. george. >> and we're almost certainly heading to oo recount no matter what. i want to bring in dan abrams. dan abrams, who has the lead going into the recount matters. election results are rarely overturned on recounts. >> right. you got to remember, this is sort of the intersection of politics meets the law. they're not just legal questions, because the political questions are critical. the numbers are enormously important. the problem that the trump team has right now is that there are basically four states that they're potentially going to be litigating in, and that means four potentially very different arguments. because this is a political argument, you want to have a cohesive strategy. you want to have a message. you want to be able to say,

we're just saying, count the votes or we're just saying that the election is over or whatever the message is. the problem is when you've got the four different places with four different rules on recounts and four different issues, and one state where the supreme court has weighed in, et cetera, they're in a very difficult spot. i think this is why the legal team is having such a tough time here, is you can say voter fraud. they're not putting up any evidence of voter fraud. if you are going to make other legal arguments, you got to figure out what the consistent theme is. that's the challenge. >> okay. pierre thomas, do you have any sense, any greater sense of what role the justice department will play in this, if any? >> george, so far the attorney general has not said one word about this election. now, the guidance we have is that if there are individual allegations of fraud that they need to investigate, the justice department, the fbi would look into those things. but we're not getting any sense that there's an army of doj attorneys about to descend

across the country to look at this issue. >> okay. pierre, thanks. terry moran, you wanted to weigh in on this? >> just the first volumely from the trump legal team was scatter shot, it was we saw somebody do something somewhere. they are moving to what makes better sense it seems to me, which are category of votes that they're going to try to get out. one, these late-arriving battle in pennsylvania which they're very concerned about. another, the signature software that's being used, signature verifying software being used in clark county, nevada, and not elsewhere. that's one they filed some legal papers on. so they're now looking at what they're going to have to do if they are behind. >> but then that becomes as much a math problem as a legal problem. >> yes. there has to be enough of those votes. but, look, it is better than saying, somebody gave me a post-it note with somebody nefarious on it. they're looking at -- because they're going to need lots of votes, not one or two and not some wild allegation of corruption. they need to move votes out of

joe biden's tally so that they can win the state. >> terry moran, thanks very much. we have to take another quick break. we'll be right back.

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he challenged joe biden. thanks for joining us again tonight. congratulations, joe biden won your state. are you confident he will win the white house? >> it is looking -- it is looking very good. i want to congratulate him for the campaign that he ran. >> and you gave him an awful lot of help. you endorsed him right away. you promised to work. you said the most important priority for all democrats had to be to remove donald trump from the white house. what do you make of the results as we're seeing across the country right now, a nation still deeply divided? donald trump still getting the second most votes of any candidate in american history. republicans appearing at least for now, depending on what happens in georgia, to hold control of the senate. >> well, george, to me this election was about many, many things, but the most significant thing was about whether or not we end the pathological lying in the white house and we end the danger of losing our democracy and the rule of law in our

country. thank god it appears that we're going to end that danger. but right now in front of us is an enormous amount of work that must be done. anyone who is sitting home tonight saying, oh, my goodness, wonderful, joe biden won, our job is just beginning. you've got mass unemployment. you have starvation wages in this country. you have systemic racism. we're the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people. we are terribly worried about the existential threat of climate change. our infrastructure is crumbling. what congress must do with p. president biden is move aggressively and rapidly on an agenda that's stands for working people and for low income people, and make that as bold as it possibly can be. >> well, that gets -- >> it is a lot of pain -- a lot of pain in this country that has to be addressed. >> i guess it all comes down to possibly can be. you have fewer democrats in the

house right now. as i said, we don't know the outcome in the senate but disgoing to close. you said you expect joe biden to be the most progressive president since fdr. is that still possible? >> absolutely it is. look, the american people -- the american people understand that we have enormous and profound crises. does anybody out there think $7.25 an hour is the kind of federal minimum wage we have? does anyone out there think we should be the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people? not to guarantee family and medical leave? not to deal with the existential threat of climate change? not to create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure? i know i am attacked every day, far left, far left. but every idea we are fighting for are ideas that are supported by the vast majority of the american people. democrats, independents,

republicans. people understand that we have got to finally have a government working for all, not just the top. >> how much of that can joe biden do without congress? >> well, obviously as donald trump has shown us, the power of a pen on executive orders is very significant. i hope he utilizes that. but i do believe -- you know, we talk about bringing a very divided nation together, and there's no question. in a very painful way, sad way, our country is divided. one way, it is not going to solve all of our problems, not going to solve systemic racism, but one of the ways that we can bring people together is around an agenda that works for farmers in iowa as well as low income people in new york city. there is a commonality of interests that we have. all of us need health care. all of us need decent wages. all of us want our kids to be able to get a college education. for too long in my view the democratic party has not been as

aggressive as it should be in addressing the needs of the working class of this country, and that is why trump has done so well with those people. it is time for us to expose trump as a fraud and to address the real needs of working families in this country. when those people stand up and say, you know what? yeah, i want my kid to be able to get to college. yeah, i want my mother to have decent health care and to be able to afford prescription drugs. yeah, i'm a farmer and i know what climate change is doing to my farm in this country. when we address the real needs of the people of this country, they will come around. they will demand that congress act. >> bottom line, are you more exhilarated or relieved tonight? >> i am very relieved. to be honest with you, i haven't been sleeping so well lately. i was very worried about four more years of trump. it appears that that is not going to be the case, so i feel exhilarated. i feel relieved, but i know how

much work we have to do. "a", to win the two seats in georgia to give democrats control over the senate and, "b", to move forward an agenda that finally speaks to the needs of working families and not just the very wealthy. >> senator sanders, thanks for your time tonight. >> thank you. i want to go to heidi heitcamp. you searched with bernie sandeis in the senate. you come dfrom a different wing. what is your sense of what you heard? >> you look at the recovery from covid and you think about, you know, the president says, look, we're coming back, we're coming back. the bottom quartile is not coming back, the service workers, the gig workers driving ubers or whatever it is. bernie has always spoken so eloquently about the needs of eliminating this huge wealth disparity, income inequality. that is where there is commonality in the democratic party. maybe we have different ideas on

how we get there, but our goals are shared, and we believe, as he said, that those goals are shared by so many people in this country and really can be the uniting factor. so, you know, you may say, oh, bernie, he's as far away from you and joe manchin as he can get, but it is right on these issues where bernie j, joe and stand together. >> matthew, you worked for george w. bush. i guess you are more of an independent now. can joe biden find common ground in the country, in the congress on some of those issues? >> absolutely he can find common ground and he absolutely needs to do that. i mean i think one of the things we've seen over the last two cycles is there's a number of voters when you separate them from their partisan leanings, they vote for higher -- they vote for higher minimum wage. they vote for expanded medicare, red and blue places. there is a place for this. the problem for joe biden is even if he gets 50 votes --

let's say he wins and he gets 50 votes in the senate by winning both seats in the long shot, to win both seats in georgia, it is 50/50. at 50/50, he has two senators from arizona who need to watch independents. he will have two senators from georgia who need to watch for independents. he has joe manchin who is in a red west virginia. it is not like the idea they get 50/50 and vice president harris, if she does become, can break the tie and all will be fine. he has to appeal not only to some republicans, he has to appeal to five or six members of the democratic caucus who are in purple states or lean republican states who don't want to get too far over their skis. one thing i will say about independents in this race, when you look at the exit polls, george, each candidate did better among their party than the last -- than the last race. so donald trump and joe biden got 94% of their party's vote,

each of them did. donald trump actually expanded his vote among republicans. the republicans didn't leave donald trump. they coalesced around donald trump, and who decided this election? in state after state after state, if joe biden wins, was that share of independents that is 10% or 12% or 15%, they broke away from donald trump and towards joe biden. and in the senate races in all of the places that the democrats won the senate races and key races, it was the independents that broke and gave him the victory. >> one of the key questions going forward is will those independents stay politically engaged. matt dowd, thanks very much. we have to take another quick break. we've made a lot of breakfasts. and along the way, we noticed something was missing. a warm cinnamon roll for breakfast, or with breakfast. a fluffy blueberry muffin, from the drive thru you're already driving through. a glazed apple fritter, which might find its way into your coffee.

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welcome back to our election coverage. still waiting for the key states to be projected, and as we are doing that we were talking about, linsey davis, i want to bring you in on this.

we were just talking about how joe biden might find common ground among democrats, with independents, with republicans. most important perhaps on the key issue of the country is dealing with the covid crisis. >> right. it is not just we talk about the division of the country, but there's division within the states. two points i want to make quickly. ohio, for example, we found voters there are split nearly 50/50. 49% said it was more important to rebuild the -- to actually contain the virus than it was to rebuild the economy. 46% there said that the priority should be the economy. then, interesting report out of the ap, where they found that the counties that had the biggest surge of coronavirus voted overwhelmingly for president trump. 376 counties with the highest number of new cases per capita, 93% of those counties went for trump. so how do you strike the right balance? i think that's got to be top of the agenda for the next -- >> that is the key question. of course, they go together, david. the economy can't grow if the crisis is not controlled. >> and that's the argument joe

biden has tried to make. you know, there was one question where i asked, would you endorse a lockdown if science said so, and he said yes in that interview. then that was used by the trump campaign, saying joe biden will inevitably bring another lockdown. he had to clarify that we would do regional lockdowns only if necessary and only if the science dictated. i think it is interesting linsey brought up ohio because one route that joe biden, it is determined he is the president-elect, if it goes that way, he has said he will immediately call governors and mayors across the country, first of all, to find out what they need and, second of all, to build an alliance with them. one governor in particular is the popular governor of ohio, mike dewine, a republican who gets high marks in his state. he said in the last 24 hours, you know, covid is coming after all of us, and it, quite frankly, doesn't matter if you voted for donald trump or joe biden. you know, all of us are going to get hit with this. a couple of numbers out of ohio alone. not only are they seeing a rise in cases as the country is, but

hospitalizations. this is what we heard today from so many health authorities across the country. we heard it on "gma" this morning, saying hospitalizations will come next. it is coming behind the record numbers since the pandemic began that we're just seeing this week. in ohio alone, hospitalizations up 55% in two weeks. 541 were in icu beds, a record for ohio since this began. >> thank you, david. david. martha rat itd itch, you spa lot of time traveling the country. the majority of americans said, yeah, i will wear a mask, but there are deep, regional differences beneath the unity. >> there are. i'm glad you brought up ohio, because when i pulled in to ohio in september as we did our cross-count cross-country trip, that's the state i was stunned by. there were people wearing masks, especially in the big cities, but they crowded. they were going on with their lives.

they were just sick of the whole idea of covid. i mean they were sort of playing off what president trump has said, covid, covid, covid, too much about that. so there were people adhering to that, but there was an absolute blue/red divide as well. i mean you go into a redder state or more rural areas, they're definitely not wearing masks. you brought up governor dewine, david. one of the things over the past months with governor dewine and those polling -- and you could hear it in his comments over these months. first, will we do a mask mandate? no, we won't do that. then because he got too much push back and then he decides they'll wear masks, i think one of the things that joe biden has to do is have clarity and compassion about this. i think we as a nation have forgotten how serious this is, how many people have lost loved ones. remember those times in new york city? you all remember that, they're

up in new york cheering at night for our health care workers. they're still on the job. they're still dealing with this every day. they are losing health care workers among them at a rapid rate. so i think if joe biden is elected and he takes this on, he has to remind americans of the suffering and the sacrifice of our front line workers, of our first responders, of our health care workers, and have some clarity. people still have so many questions about covid. they stopped doing the covid briefings every day at the white house, and you may not need covid briefings every day at the white house, but i still think there lacks clarity from the administration on what you should do, why you should do it. it really isn't that hard. look at us tonight. i'm socially distancing in washington, d.c., because we want the studio a little smaller because we're respecting those protocols.

it is really not that hard to wear a mask, socially distant, get the country back together. it is going to be a tough job if joe biden gets in there to remind the country of something they don't really want to hear about anymore, especially in the states where they don't want masks and say that's just our freedom. remind them of seatbelts. remind them of second-hand smoke. this is the best way to proceed, and joe biden has really said he will follow the science. he just needs to make it clear and be compassionate about it. >> thank you very much. i want to bring in chris christie on this. i know you spoke to governor dewine, but play this out a little bit. former governor. if joe biden called you, what would be your best advice on how to work with the nation's governors, democrat and republican, on this crisis? >> i would say send all the governors a very clear message about what you want the national policy to be. it is very simple really. everyone should be wearing masks.

everyone should social distance, and everyone should be washing their hands frequently. but, lastly, you can do that in parallel with getting the country reopened in a gradual way. i think if we go back to lockdown, i think it is going to be something that the governors are going to have a hard time enforcing because there is lockdown fatigue in the country. but what you say, you make a deal with the american people. you say, listen, if you're not going to wear masks you have to lockdown. this is your choice. but if you will wear masks and do these other things, then we can avoid a complete lockdown again. i think if it is presented as a compromise with the american people and a challenge that they'll rise to it and do it. but what has happened so far has been you've had some people saying, don't wear a mask, other people saying, wear a mask and lock down and be at home and people don't like either of those messages. i think you have to blend those messages, and i think he can do that given what he said. >> rahm emanuel, you were barack obama's incoming chief of staff

coming out of the 2008 election. the economic crisis then was the number one priority. covid and how it impacts the economy, the number one priority right now. what are the two or three things joe biden needs to do? >> well, first of all i think we made a mistake with this blunt instrument of the lockdown. you do the things that everybody can engage in. masks, hand washing, social distance. apply the testing and the tracing in targeted areas, get medical supplies to poor communities, people of color and the elderly so you can contain it in that way. in the other piece of this, the first part of the stimulus is about creating a floor so the economy doesn't sink anymore. you can't get an economy growing if states and companies are laying people off. the second piece, what are the things we have to do to rebuild? mainly on infrastructure, and there's going to be people like jcpenney and other retail, those jobs are not coming back. give them the tools, six months you will become a computer coder, we'll pay for it and millions of people will sign up for it. they're not going back to parts of the retail economy and we need to give them a lifetime to

the next chapter. you will get bipartisanship from a lot of one part of the economic, move quickly, create a floor so it doesn't sink. the next parking lot, how do you bounce back in and give it to people and states? i want to go back to an earlier segment. you want to solve a problem? cash. it's a great ideology. people like cash. get to it people, local governments. >> the question is, will congress go along? we have to take another quick break. we'll be right back. now, simparica trio simplifies protection. ticks and fleas? see ya! heartworm disease? no way! simparica trio is the first chewable that delivers all this protection. and simparica trio is demonstrated safe for puppies. it's simple: go with simparica trio. this drug class has been associated with neurologic adverse reactions, including seizures; use with caution in dogs with a history of these disorders.